If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Albert Einstein is credited with saying that the definition of insanity is to do the same things over and over and expect different results. So I have been doing the same things over and over and yes, you’ve guessed it; expected a different set of results. I have let my bipolar disorder rule my life to such an extent I feel at times enslaved by it. I determined through pure strength of will that ‘the next time’ I would not be as bad on each up or down. But strength of will either deserted me altogether leaving me feeling morose, miserable and depressed or left me feeling so full of myself I became a bombastic, arrogant, verbose, pretentious, angry idiot: in other words I just repeated the same old cycle year after year. Expecting that with each ‘recovery’ some miraculous curing would happen and the next time round things would be different, but not actually doing anything other than wishing it, is I suppose the definition of insanity according to Einstein (or whoever!!). But I know I am not insane. Why then, has it taken me over half my life to decide that I can’t continue to do this? I can’t continue to expect different results but change nothing. It seems so simple. Change something, DO something else, try out something else. And yet, year after year, I continued to do the same old things and lamented the fact I was doomed to repeat the same old cycles, blaming it all on this “all encompassing” bipolar disorder.

If I am to be brutally honest, I don’t know what scares me more; trying something else and it not working, or trying something else and it actually working and then having to take ownership of the fact I left it so long to alter things. My new therapist said to me recently that in the small time we have been working together she has gathered from our conversations/sessions that I ‘pour myself’ into helping people when they are in need. I actually thought that was a very good way of describing it. I go into overdrive when people around me are in need. I do that for everyone except myself. With me, I surrender: I give up without putting up a fight. I am not okay with the fact I have bipolar disorder, my rhetoric will lead anyone to believe I fight against the onslaught of this illness, but when I am ambushed by its symptoms, I don’t do much to help myself because in that moment I can’t. In the ‘in between’, I haven’t done much to help myself either. I certainly educate myself and try to keep abreast of new treatments, but when I am feeling well, I am just that – feeling well. So I put all thoughts of doing other things on the back burner. I know that eventually a swing will come, but life has a way of taking over. My time is filled with other things, other people, places to go, people to see and lots of things to be done – shitloads of stuff to be done. Somehow, I end up way down the priority list.

I would certainly say that life has given me a lemon. Bipolar disorder is a bitter, bitter illness that, if I let it, will rob me of everything that is unique and wonderful and special about me. But I can’t change that fact; ever! I have bipolar disorder, it is incurable, lifelong. For now. So I can continue to rage against this illness in word only, or I can try something different. This therapy is something different. Wonderwoman (nickname for Therapist) is of the opinion that emotional intelligence will stand me in really good stead for all of my life; for all of my dealings with everyone in my life. I happen to agree. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. I am learning to use emotional reasoning to deal with my anxiety levels. I am learning to come at an issue from the point of view of assertion rather than aggression. I am learning the practical differences between the two and how to cope with my own feelings rather than push them deep down inside of me. I cannot continue to be low on my priority list. Ultimately that is not helping anyone, least of all me.

Instead I am endeavoring to make lemonade with those lemons. I am attempting to do something different. Because staying the same isn’t an option any more.

31 Questions on Bipolar. Question 1 – 4

I’ve only come across the 31 questions to be answered if you are bipolar that is doing the rounds on the blogosphere recently. “Where have you been,” the voices in my head ask?   “I’ve been gone, gone, gone,” I answer, to the rhythm of the song of the same name by Phillip Phillips. (I kid you not!) – and yes, I had to look that one up!!

I’ve decided to answer the questions too, in ‘bite’ sizes. I have to think back a good few years for some of the answers and so I am approaching this the way I am approaching everything these days, with absolute honesty, otherwise what’s the point?
Question 1. What flavour of bipolar are you? What does your diagnosis mean to you?

My ‘flavour’ of bipolar is a Rapid Cycler Bipolar 1, with mixed states thrown in for good measure. I am a frequent, persistent rapid cycler, with way more than four distinct episodes per year, certainly in the beginning and again in the last few years.  What does my diagnosis mean:  its shit!  I feel like I’m damaged, broken somehow – not whole – not trustworthy.  Not trustworthy!!
Question 2. What is your baseline mood/state? How does that impact your life?

My baseline mood/state? I had to think about that one. That seems like a stupid statement, but I haven’t been baseline for at least 26 months and I forget. I forget what it’s like to feel ‘normal’. Looking back on my life though I have been successful, for the most part, in my working life. I have been mostly successful at rearing a family. I worry about the long-term effects of having an individual struggling with bipolar as a mother on my children, but for the most part, they seem to have come out of childhood relatively unscathed. I have been in a relationship with the same man for the past 27 years (married for 23 of those years) and he’s still here so that is something. We have had our ups and lots of downs, so whether it is a ‘successful’ relationship I’m still trying to work that one out. For a long time I viewed myself as ‘broken’ and was amazed at the fact that he stayed in the relationship. I had to count myself lucky that he was still here. Lets face it, who else would be able to love me, or put up with me, or put up with my moods, my anger, my depression. So the fact he stayed was ‘yah’ for him and a relief for me. So, back to baseline: I think my baseline allowed me to be high functioning, possibly more on the manic side of normal than the depressive side. The last two/two and a half years, that graph seems to have flipped and I have been on the very low depressive side of normal. In fact I’ve been so below normal, I scared myself sometimes.

How did that impact my life? Well I suppose I answered that with some of the above. I was high functioning. I worked hard in a full time job, I mothered three kids, I ran a home, I was a wife. When my children were diagnosed with dyslexia one after the other, I did what I do, I went into overdrive, learned about the condition, got them help, helped them myself, became the epitome of a pushy mum at their school and pushed and pulled them through their schooling fighting for them every step of their way.

I had few friends though and I mean in the ‘real’ sense of the word. I had two friends during the time my children were really small. Relationships were and are still not easy for me. Now, acquaintances and ‘casual connections’ they were easy. They didn’t really ‘know’ me, or have to get to know me and all my issues, so they were easy; kept at arms length. Despite being in an industry where I had to talk to people regularly, I kept myself and my personality wrapped tightly, protected, away from others.

How does it affect my life now?

The fact the graph has swung down to the depressive side is harder. It’s harder to fight off slight depression than to cope with slight mania. My default seems to be pessimism, ineffectiveness, lack of energy, lack of any sort of motivation. My get up and go has got up and gone! So that’s hard. It’s actually really hard. And it’s really hard on family relationships and dynamics.

Question 3: How old were you at the onset? How old were you at diagnosis? How were you given the diagnosis and are you satisfied with the way it was handled?

Well, now, how old was I at the onset? – That is what I am actually still trying to figure out? I was ‘diagnosed’ at 26. I went to my doctor nine months after my son was born thinking I had post natal depression and he’d give me Prozac and everything would be fine in a few weeks! He listened to me and said ‘Weeelll, its not only pnd, so I need to send you to a specialist, which he did. I got an appointment fairly quickly and went (as a private patient) to a psychiatrist who at the time (unbeknownst to me) was one of the foremost specialists in Bipolar disorder in the country. He diagnosed me within one session with a ‘rapidly cycling mood disorder’, and that as they say is that; I was 26 years old – petrified, unsure of what it really meant and what would happen from here.   Despite being a foremost specialist, my psychiatrist never really explained what the diagnosis meant, what it would mean for me, for my life and where we (or I) should go from here. I went off and on my meds like a yo-yo in the early years thinking I was cured and was not really aware of what would happen if I did this. I did research, read up on the condition, but never really associated what I read with myself and lied like a trooper to my psych whom I couldn’t for some reason bond with. Was I happy with the way things were handled back then? Absolutely not. First and foremost I would have loved more information, more knowledge, more everything. Now, having been with another psychiatrist since 2003, I have come to realize that I had ‘events’ in my life way before the diagnosis in 1995, when I was 26, as far back as my mid teens. Does it really matter at this point ‘when’ it started? Not to me. Not at this point. Too much living has happened in between.
Question 4: How do you feel about people who diagnose themselves online and then treat themselves for bipolar?

One word: Idiots

Seek professional help. Get a proper diagnosis. Get a medical plan. Get support. Just don’t go on online diagnostic tests. They will have you having everything from cancer to brain tumors. They are not reliable!!!!

Okay, I’m exhausted. I think those four answers are enough for today’s ‘session’.  I’m leaving the couch now!!  Be back soon though……

Dyslexia and Exams; the unfairness of it all.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but rearing young children is a doddle compared to trying to help young adults navigate their way through school, to college, to their first job, through peer pressure and all the angst that comes along with growing up and growing away from ones parents.  The problems faced by us parents at a time when what is important to our children is that “so-and-so said such and such to me and I’m not their friend any more”, seem huge at the time, but are nothing compared to the angst suffered by our young adult children in their search for the right path. Simply put, the stakes are higher. Simply put the pressure is greater – on them and on us as parents helping out on their behalf.   Had anyone sat me down when my children were younger and said to me, it gets harder, I would have laughed. Having three children under the age of four was tough. It required a type of organization and effectiveness that was at times hard to juggle with the actual realities of life with three small children. They didn’t want to co-operate with my efficient plans; in other words, life got in the way. The best-laid plans very often went astray within the first few hours of the day, but to be effective (and you have to be with such small children), I learned to roll with it as best I could, as often as I could.

“Don’t worry, its gets easier”, was the refrain I heard from older mothers. “Don’t worry, they don’t stay small forever” etc etc.. No they don’t; and the problems one faces change too. I have not much to complain about. My children were all fit and healthy for most of their life. A bout with chicken pox that crossed the blood brain barrier in my three year old daughter was the only time I came face to face with an illness that was potentially life altering. But it wasn’t and she recovered after a spell in hospital and all became right again with the world, with my world.

My kids were all diagnosed with dyslexia in early childhood. For a time, I lost all focus and perspective. When my oldest son Gary was diagnosed, I felt at the time ‘there goes his future…’; all the plans I had for him were now down the toilet. But again, order was restored to my world when I put his difficulties in perspective and went about ensuring he had the help, support, understanding and commitment of all his teachers, his tutors and a workshop where I enrolled him to help with the difficulties that arise with dyslexia. After he was enrolled, then my daughter was diagnosed, and then my youngest son. Coping with one dyslexic child is easy compared to the commitment it takes to cope with three of them. Getting them the help they need is costly; workshops are expensive, tutors are expensive and then the time you as a parent need to invest in their education seems at times exhaustive. I gave up work for five years and ferried them to tutors, to workshops, I educated myself as to what exactly this means for them, I sat on school boards, the parents association and the board of the Dyslexic Association of Ireland all with the express purpose of helping my children to the best of my ability.

Then your children make their way through school slowly and not easily. Every parent teacher meeting and every report goes pretty much the same; teachers telling me my child is a bit unfocused and must try harder and me telling them about their dyslexia and how it affects each child. Some teachers embraced my knowledge, asked for more information and in collaboration we helped my child(ren) through their years in school. Other teachers scoffed, dismissed the diagnosis, vetoed my suggestions as to how to get the best from my child and openly discouraged my intimate involvement with their education. I was, I suppose the epitome of a pushy Mum. And I make no apology for that.   I did whatever I could, whenever I could. I championed their cause because at that young age, they could not advocate for themselves.

As they got older however, there comes a time when you have to let go of their hand and let them walk alone. Towards the end of their time in secondary school I did that with mine, I let them take responsibility for their education, but I never let them do it alone. I was always there, at the sidelines, ready to take up the baton at a moments notice.

My eldest received what is termed “accommodations” during his state exams for the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate state examinations. He got extra time, a reader and a separate room where he could concentrate to the best of his ability. The accommodations he received were not in any way to give him an advantage over any of his peers, it was simply to ‘level the playing field’ so that he could complete his exams to the best of his ability. He has a reading, writing and processing deficit that puts him in the lowest 2% for his age group. His IQ is above average. But the slow processing, writing and reading speeds, put him at a distinct disadvantage when having to sit examinations even with the ‘accommodations’.   Simply put he tanks!

I understand this, he understands this, we realize that the results he gets in examinations are not the true measure of who he is, or of his ability. Unfortunately for people like my son whose difficulties are profound, they are measured by the results of exams and nothing more. Pathways to third level education are only through the results of examinations. In the past when private colleges would accept students on to courses according to the ability to pay, not the natural ability of a student, it meant that there was some hope for those who didn’t quite make the grade in their exams. All that has changed now.  I understand the reasoning behind it, of course it is to protect the ‘integrity of the examinations process’ and to ensure that students who would not have the ability to complete a college course don’t start it. It is to protect them from failure. But what if failure in examinations is all they have experienced?  What happens to this person? What is to be their life, their future? So much emphasis is placed on examinations that in a few years time will mean absolutely nothing. So much of a persons future is determined by what they can or can’t do once they leave school and head on for college – or don’t. Years ago, it was not such a big deal if you didn’t attend college. My generation is filled with people who still managed to make a success of their lives and create a successful career without ever sitting in another classroom once they finished second level education. That is however not the case for this generation, the generation of my children. With so much competition these days for any sort of a job, getting even a start-up or part-time job is extremely difficult. You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. And by the way, do you have a degree??!

So for young adults like my son, the route to a ‘career’ will be a much longer and more arduous one. When I think of what he is capable of, but is hindered by, it makes me extremely annoyed at our current system. It is also the most heartbreaking thing to watch, seeing your young adult child devastated because of another failure and reaching the end to a particular path they wanted to journey on. Knowing that as a parent I can do nothing to help is one of the most difficult things to accept. There is an inherent unfairness in a system that measures ones ability simply by a series of results in a test. Because you received the points necessary to study to become a doctor does not mean you should be one, or would even be a good one. So this ‘system of measurement’ is flawed. It is the only one we have, but it doesn’t mean it is right.

William Butler Yeats said that “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”. Our system of education fills the pail. Any education system that only fills the pail and doesn’t light or ignite the fire for knowledge or thirst for learning for learnings’ sake is doomed to fail in the long run.

It’s been a while………..

It’s a while since I picked up a pen, or danced my fingers across the keyboard to do anything other than check my bank balance (depressing) or see who sent me emails I don’t need/want/require/or are of any benefit. Although I probably could do with the diet pills, I certainly don’t need a penile enlargement, to find out if my partner is cheating on me, a Russian bride, to claim the lottery prizes (of which there are quite a few) that I have won (but never entered!!) or any of the other asinine stuff that comes to my inbox every day.

Digression over, it’s been a while….

It’s been a while since I had any time to myself. It’s been a while since I felt able to string a coherent set of thoughts together. It’s been a while since I have had any sort of peace within myself. And it’s been a while since I simply felt like putting down on paper/screen/(out of my head) my thoughts; because once I do that I have to confront what is there before me. And that’s the difficult part….. The thing with bipolar is I never really trust my own feelings. Are they real? Is my anger justified? Why am I really sad, or frustrated, or discouraged, or upset? Is what I am feeling real at all? I have started sessions with a psychologist and she’ll be teaching me the techniques of cbt, but before any of the good stuff that will actually help is talked about, she’s brought me back to places I’m not sure I want to revisit. She’s brought me back to a time in my life I wanted to just forget, wipe from my memory as if I can just ignore its very existence. She is making me dredge up things I either wanted to ignore, or forgot about in some sort of self-protection approach. She’s a lovely psychologist, but I have left the last three sessions with her in tears by the end. And then I’m upset for the week. I’m facing issues about myself and others around me that I don’t particularly want to face. Because facing issues like that means that action must then be taken. Without some sort of action, this will all be pointless.

I don’t know why I was reluctant to undergo this type of therapy. Strike that, I think I do. – My psych told me at my last two sessions with her that my recent ‘issues’ were not bipolar related – that she feels I am instead having a bit of a crisis and an inability to deal with the stresses of life – for which she cannot prescribe any medication because I’m at the highest limit for my particular meds (we just recently changed the anti-depressant anyway – but she says its not related to my recent anxieties!!); hence the psychology sessions!! The first time she said it, I passed it off as her having a bad day, because surely I can’t be “not able” to cope with “life”. That sounded ridiculous to me. I’ve coped with bp for so long, how can it now be that ‘life’ is getting in the way… how can it be that it is simply the stresses and anxieties of life that is now making me feel this wretched. The second time she said it however, I had to take notice. She suggested the psychology sessions and organized them fairly promptly which brings me to the last month. It’s so easy to label everything that goes wrong in my life as ‘bipolar related’. It’s easy to pass off feelings of insecurity, anger, despair as being the symptoms of the illness I have for so long shouldered. In labeling them that way, then it becomes easy to avoid doing anything about them because the root cause is not of my making, well not really – it’s in my head – its only my ‘illness’ talking. Except sometimes it’s not in my head. That is what this psychologist is making me face. She is making me face myself and my decisions and my actions or inactions in a very cool, calm way – but its wreaking havoc on me. I come out of there a snotty mess. For the last few weeks she’s shook my hand and said it will get better. But before that happens we have to go back….. Go back and dig up stuff I don’t want to. Go forward and deal with stuff I’d rather label as bipolar related, go and look myself in the mirror and say ‘yeah, but how do you really feel’..

And I’m terrified.

I’m terrified of what I will see.

I’m terrified what I will find out about myself

I’m terrified of what I will have to then do about it.

I’m not sure if I have used my bipolar as a crutch my whole life or as an excuse, or as a shield. Perhaps it’s a bit of all three, perhaps its none of those; I really don’t know. And that’s the terrifying part. That and what’s now going to happen.

Shit, I hate the unfamiliarity of all this….

Living in Hope

There are times I would feel quite at home putting up a poster with these words “Help wanted to find missing person”. Of course that missing person would be me, or at least the part of me that is, at that time, gone. During depressive episodes I feel the real ‘me’ the part of me that enjoys and embraces life is literally just gone, lost and forlorn. We all know the state, its where all hope has departed, where instead of positivity we have the other demons on our shoulders, hopelessness, desolation, anxiety, profound sadness and all their lovely cousins…
It’s a grim state, the depressive element of bipolar. I’m not entirely sure which part of being bipolar I hate the most; the highs or the lows. Each has their own fascinating and treacherous ‘side-effects’! I say fascinating because despite all our medical discoveries, we are no closer to a ‘cure’ now than we were a few hundred years ago. We have made breakthroughs and invented drugs to keep the symptoms of mental illness at bay, but a cure? – Nah! Not yet!

It is however fascinating to realize there is nothing more resilient than the human psyche. I have come back from the deep and come down from the pinnacle and while I can’t and won’t say ‘unscathed’, I have survived. The consequences of my illness mean I’ve lost friends, I’ve alienated those I love, I’ve done many things I wouldn’t even begin to write about. At the same time, I have an unquenchable desire to understand my actions, to comprehend my emotions, to recognize the pits and pendulums so that I can do better, be better.

Nowadays the medical profession prefer to use the term ‘mind’ instead of psyche. Mind, psyche, cognizance, perception they are pretty much the same when dealing with a ‘sick’ psyche (sorry -mind)!! My perception of things is askew because of an imbalance in hormones somewhere within my brain. It could even be a teeny tiny imbalance, the medical profession doesn’t quite know for sure yet! In the past, I’ve been vocal about the lack of understanding, research and treatment for people with mental illness irrespective of the category. But the treatments that have been available up to just quite recently (as cutting edge medicine!!!) were barbaric.

Mental illness was once mistaken as demonic possession. In an effort to ‘cure’ the infected, holes were cut in their heads to force the demon out! This was called trepanning or trepanation. What’s weird (or weirder perhaps) is that practice is alive and well today, I kid you not….

Trepanation is the practice of making a hole in the skull in order to improve the brain pulsations and hence the overall well being. A trepan is the instrument used for making a hole in the skull bone. It is sometimes spelled trephine. The idea is to pump up the brainbloodvolume. It’s known that one’s level of consciousness is directly related to the volume of blood in one’s brain. As a result, trepanners say, one feels happier and more energetic.

For more on this wonderful technique see http://www.trepanationguide.com

Hydrotherapy was also another wonderful treatment thought to ‘cure’ mental illness. Some patients were mummified in towels and soaked in freezing cold water for hours on end. Other patients were strapped into freezing cold baths (sometimes for days on end) and only allowed out to the toilet. If that wasn’t bad enough, patients who didn’t respond were subjected to hosing from high-powered jets! Needless to say, this type of treatment was discredited for lack of tangible results.

In the early 1900’s the purposeful infection of a patient with Malaria to induce a high fever to cure their illness was first used. The procedure was hypothesized and carried out by Austrian physician Julius Wagner von Jauregg (who incidentally was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927).
After that came along came a young Polish neurophysiologist and neuropsychiatrist named Manfred J. Sakel. While an internist in the Lichterfelde Hospital for Mental Diseases, in Berlin, Germany, he provoked a superficial coma in a morphine-addicted woman, using an injection of insulin, and obtained a remarkable recovery of her mental faculties. He then embarked on a coma inducing rampage treating patients with this technique for years. Despite claims of a greater than 60% success rate, controlled studies showed that a long-term cure was not achieved and that improvements were many times temporary. But, since Sakel’s method was the gentler and less harmful of all somatic (affecting the body as opposed to the mind) techniques, it was still in use in many countries until recently.

Up next comes a Hungarian pathologist named Ladislas von Meduna who in 1933 reasoned that, because schizophrenia was rare in epileptics and because epileptics seemed much happier after seizures he hypothesised inducing seizures in schizophrenic patients with the use of drugs would make them calmer. So the drug Metrazol was pumped into patients at varying levels. Of course, inducing a seizure had side-effects including fractured bones and memory loss, so doctors soon turned away from this treatment.

And of course, lets not forget the Lobotomy! Destroying a persons’ frontal lobe is to me a bit like throwing out the baby with the bathwater!! According to Wikipaedia:

“The procedure, controversial from its inception, was a mainstream procedure for more than two decades (prescribed for psychiatric and occasionally other conditions) despite general recognition of frequent and serious side effects. Whilst some patients experienced symptomatic improvement with the operation, this was achieved at the cost of creating other impairments, and this balance between benefits and risks contributed to the controversial nature of the procedure. The originator of the procedure, António Egas Moniz, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949 for the “discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses”, although the awarding of the prize has been subject to controversy. The use of the procedure increased dramatically in some countries from the early 1940s and into the 1950s; by 1951, almost 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States. Following the introduction of antipsychotic medications in the mid-1950s, lobotomies underwent a gradual but definite decline.
Lucky us huh!!

So, along with probably hundreds of other ‘treatments’ (I use that term flippantly) tried out on us mental patients over the last three hundred years or so, the above gives a glimpse of what our predecessors had to endure for a cure. There is no doubt that casting a glance backward and seeing how modern treatments were developed, it makes me feel extremely lucky to be alive at this time. Medicine is not perfect, but it’s better than the above. Necessity is the mother of invention. With so many of us struggling with all sorts of ailments, some environmental, some psychological, some physiological, perhaps now the ‘necessity’ for something more lasting and complete than medication will finally come along. One can always live in hope……

It is NOT okay to take your own life……

I was on a train on Friday afternoon, something I haven’t done in years. And it was full of university students on their way home for the weekend. I sat at a table alongside three of these students, one to the side of me and two facing me. I put on my ipod and I tried to drown out the clackty clack sound of the train and the din of the voices as people chatted and laughed.

I was absolutely amazed at the confidence of those three girls. One sat there with her laptop and typed notes (I presume), while the two facing me talked about their lecturers and other students at the university and what they would do this weekend. They oozed self-confidence. It seemed to just come from their pores, from the inside out. Their faces were animated, they gestured with their hands and they were alive – so alive….

I don’t remember being like that at their age, but I am sure I was at some point; that almost ‘cocky’ self-confidence that is the preserve of the young (and sometimes the not so young!!). It’s almost like an ignorance of the trials of life and what can come your way and because you haven’t been visited by the ‘school of hard knocks yet’, you are exuding poise and trust and belief in oneself.

My daughter had to go to a funeral on Saturday. One of her school pals had taken her own life; she was 16. There are probably many reasons for this and it is information no-one will be privy to now. Her boyfriend who had recently broken up with her sat like a statue at the back of the church and none of them quite knew what to say to him. He didn’t engage, he didn’t speak and left after the ceremony. My daughter didn’t know the girl very well and while she was upset, she wasn’t devastated. On Sunday morning, she came into my bedroom and said she NEEDED to go to her friends house; now! When I asked her what was up, she said the young chap had been found dead that morning (Sunday). He too had taken his own life. There will be no explanation for his parents either… What is glaringly obvious is two families are now in tatters. My daughter knew the chap. She had just finished school with him. They had just been to their graduation ball a few weeks prior. When I looked at the devastation this has caused and then juxtaposition that to the confidence and the poise of the girls on the train, it just breaks my heart. Nothing stays the same. Things change, circumstances change, life happens! It can get worse, for sure, but it can also get better.

It makes me realize how precious life is, how fleeting it can be and how nothing will stay the same. We are the sum of our experiences, we live with our mistakes but we learn from them. We rejoice in our triumphs and celebrate our uniqueness. But nothing stays the same.  I have tried to tell my children this over the last few days; reinforcing the message that things pass, things change and no matter how bad or sad they feel, I am here always; to listen, to be a shoulder to cry on, to be their most ferocious supporter and the one who offers unconditional love. I needed them to know it’s not okay to give up, that the devastation that any action causes will ripple out and leave those who love them in a very bad place for perhaps a very long time. I made them promise that if they ever felt so bad they might do something stupid, that they would come to me. I just hope they have listened.

A mothers love knows no bounds.

I came across this about a year ago, and I loved it so much I printed it out on really fancy paper and framed it.  It now has pride of place in my hall.  Any time my kids feel I’m being unreasonable (which is a lot of the time), I simply point to it and tell them to read it again.  It encapsulates so much what I feel, who I am as a mother and what I feel I have to do to protect them from themselves a lot of the time.  My kids are almost adults, my eldest son is 20, my daughter 18 and the baby of the family is 16.  A lot of the time when they hear the word ‘no’ from my mouth, they are unable to understand the reasoning behind it.  Having to explain it in terms they understand can be difficult considering when they were younger the ‘no’ could so easily be followed by ‘I said no’ and that would be the end of the conversation.  God, rearing kids can be difficult!  Protecting them from outside influences make me the enemy sometimes.  But its one of the most important jobs I have to do and I can’t ever give that up, just throw in the towel and say I am done….

My Promise to my Children

For as long as I live, I will always be your parent first and your friend second. 

I will stalk you, flip out on you, lecture you, drive you insane, be your worst nightmare and hunt you down like a bloodhound when I have to because I love you. 

When you understand that, I will know you have become a responsible adult. 

You will never find anyone else in your life that loves, cares, prays and worries about you as much as I do. 

If you don’t mutter under your breath “I hate you” at least once in your life, I am not doing my job properly.

Now ain’t that the truth!!!

To conceive or not to conceive – Is that really a valid question?

Let me be clear from the off…… This is not ‘sound medical advice’, this may not even be sound – or advice!

It just happens to have been on my thoughts a lot lately and I had to get it out there.  So had others, because I’ve been reading what seems like a lot of posts about pregnancy and bi-polar and the risks of passing this genetic illness on to children conceived. (Either there is more of them, or for some reason I am particularly drawn to those posts these days.)

I have to say the genetics of bi-polar depression was not something that entered my head when hubby and I were contemplating having a second and third child.

My bi-polar was triggered by postpartum depression, which just didn’t go, following the birth of my first son! For months, we thought I was struggling with this ‘common ailment’ associated with pregnancy and childbirth, but when I started to really act out, himself knew long before I knew that I kinda had a “major” problem.

I was twenty six years old.

There is mental illness in my family. That should have been the first clue perhaps! But mental illness was not discussed when I was growing up at all. My uncle had been hospitalized many times during my childhood and it was talked about in very hushed voices, only sometimes, when my mothers’ family all got together. Back then the stigma of mental illness was enormous. As a result however, us kids – (my ma’s kids I mean), six of us in all, never had a clue that we could have this time-bomb ticking inside, waiting to explode and turn our lives upside down and inside out.

Then there were great aunts, and great uncles who were consigned to ‘asylums’ when my mother was a child and this was seen as such a dishonor and humiliation to any family, that it was not talked about. Relatives just ‘disappeared’ from family circle in those days. But that’s Ireland for you. If you don’t admit the problem exists, then the problem doesn’t exist.

I suppose my mothers reticence to accept my illness came from those days when having a mental illness meant you were put in an institution and left there.

Treatments like I have now, did not exist in those days (I’m talking about 50 or 60 years ago), and if they did, they were rudimentary and severe. That was unfortunately the limit of our knowledge of the brain at that time, so I am delighted that I live in these times. That’s the history lesson…..

So  I was diagnosed with bi-polar when my son was eight months old and I had no clue that I could have passed this illness on to my baby. I was only about six months on treatment when I became pregnant again and once I found out, decided to come off my meds. I didn’t want to do anything to endanger my baby. It was against medical advice, but I felt that any possible risk to my growing baby was far greater than my risk of having manic or depressive episodes. As it happened, I was pretty balanced during the seven months that remained, but once my daughter was born, I went straight back on the meds, to avoid the swings.

It wasn’t until years later when I changed docs and really began to understand my condition that I realized my children have an increased risk for developing bi-polar. But then again, they could develop anything; cancer, lupus, arthritis or a whole other array of chronic or not so chronic illnesses.

My third child came along as a wonderful joyous surprise, and again, we as parents never questioned the genetic chances we were risking.   It’s only since the mid 90’s that the internet really took off, and the internet was where I did most of my research years after my diagnosis. Through the years, I did discuss with himself the gamble we had taken, but in knowing that, we have watched our kids for the warning signs, the little triggers, anything that could be amiss.

Had I known before I had my children what I know now about the genetic component of mental illness would I have chosen to conceive? How can I answer that question? Every day I thank God for my kids. For a long spell in my life they kept me grounded and temporarily sane (or at least less insane than in the past and perhaps now).

They make me laugh almost every day.

They make me proud every moment of every day.

I could not imagine what my life would have been like without my kids. Probably a deep, darker place than it can be at times, because they enrich my life in ways I just can’t explain.

Do I feel guilty that I could have given them a higher risk of illness? They breathe don’t they! Life is risk, living is not easy; it’s easier for some than others, I just happen to be mentally challenged. But if any of my kids develop some sort of illness (mental or not!!) I will be here to help them find their way. As a parent that is all I can do.

Would I do it all again, knowing now what I didn’t know then? – without one iota, one shadow, one miniscule moment of doubt – Yes!

Is that selfish? – Perhaps, but then nobody said I was perfect!

Those Crazy Calm days are ‘Mad’.

Okay, so last Sunday I had a massive melt down. I mean stomp on the ground, ball up my fists, slam doors, scream at the top of my lungs meltdown.

I didn’t really see it coming and I certainly was not prepared for the severity of the feelings. I wanted to hurt something, I wanted to wreck a room, I wanted to hit someone, such was my rage. I can only describe it as pure rage; anything else would be to do it an injustice. It took every ounce of my being, every last shred of self control I had in me to not hurt myself or someone else, to not trash my bedroom, or my living room. Every single ounce I had. And then it left me spent. I had barely enough energy to get out of bed for the next few days. I’ve often described my life as a rollercoaster and this is how I can aptly explain what it felt like. The rage didn’t increase slowly over a few days, it was like I was catapulted out on a bad ride without warning, without buildup. All of a sudden I was in it, And I did something I’ve not done in the way way way long time. I drank. I drank to calm myself down, to numb the anger in my brain. It’s been a long time since I had to calm myself down this way; years really, it could even be a decade. But it was that, or pace around the room breaking whatever was in my path. It would have happened. I wanted the feeling to stop and the only way of doing that was to release it, or stop it in its tracks. Had my daughter not been in the house, it could have been worse. It was sparked off my an argument between hubby and daughter, but my reaction was way over the top.  My reaction put their argument to bed fairly quickly.  And then they all left; and I was in the house alone.

 I had to phone my daughter later and tell her to get home quickly. I needed someone in the house to ‘stay my hand’ so to speak! And when the drink too effect, I was utterly spent.

The next few days were horrendous. I had to drag myself around the house and do what needs to be done in a house with really five adults. My kids are grown now, and really they should take on more responsibility, but its’ my fault they don’t. I still think I’m superwoman at times and take on everything when I should delegate; for their sake as well as mine.

And today I woke up with tons of energy, so the bathrooms have been cleaned; I mean they are gleaming! Three loads of washing are done and on the line drying, the sitting room and kitchen are spotless, not a speck of dust anywhere, the floors have been polished, the rugs hovered, the fireplace brass reflects my face and I’m only up three hours. Welcome to the world of a bi-polar rapid cycler.

This I recognize. This energy that makes me so productive, hello!! I remember you!!

I’m definitely swinging here.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the next few days or weeks, because I’m not sure if I’m heading down, or heading back up again!!

It must be so hard to live with someone like me. Perhaps that’s too hard; it must be hard to live with someone who struggles with this illness.

Believe me, its not pleasant ‘living it’ either; but being on the receiving end of tantrums and outbursts and then having to pick up the pieces when I’m so depressed I don’t even want to get out of bed?

Gosh it must be hard.

And I don’t tell hubby enough how much I love him and how much I value and appreciate his support.

That’s my mission when he gets home.

To tell him how loved he is.

That might make up somewhat for screaming my head off at him on Sunday!

What a rollercoaster ride this life is, and you never even know what each day is going to bring.

No man is an island…. but sometimes!!

For my school exams in my final year, I had to write an essay on the novel Silas Marner, titled ‘No man is an island’; discuss…

I had read the book inside and out, upside and down and felt at the mere age of 18 I knew everything; that I was a champion of the world, that at 18, I knew all there was to know and pretty much acted that way.  Gosh, when I look back now, I realize how absurd that confidence was, given how little I knew of life and the curveballs it can throw at you.

That essay however has stuck with me during good and bad times, because what I did know even then (though only in some small way) is that none of us are alone; no matter how much we may think otherwise.

Our lives impact the people around us in ways we cannot comprehend when we are that young and the older we get, the more of an impact our presence or absence can have on those around us.  (Philosophical lesson over!)

I have a friend, (I love her to bits) who has seen me through my fair share of dark days and endless weeks, when I have felt nothing but emptiness.  She has given to me without a thought of receiving anything back.  Through some of her darkest days though, I have been there to wipe away her tears, to hold her and assure her everything would be okay, even though I hadn’t a clue if that was actually the truth.

But!

(And there’s always a ‘but’ isn’t there:  otherwise life would just be boring!!)

At this point in her life she is happy.  However, some time back when times weren’t as good, she underwent cognitive therapy and thinks it is the best thing since sliced bread.   It doesn’t work for me!   But she espouses the virtue of this each time I mention a dark day or moment, or fleeting thought.  I have talked to her about things I’ve not spoken to most other people about; but when I ask for advice, what has happened before all gets spewed back at me as if it was some kind of viscous vomit.  Her intention is not to hurt, and I know that, but having a constant reminder of how things ‘were’ instead of how things ‘now are’ is not very soothing for my spirit.

The problem, the big ‘But’ in the room is I have told her this, and yet…. And yet….  my past experiences continue to become a ‘present day’ incident in her mind, irrespective of the now!  She wants to be my balm.  So what happens when you don’t need consolation and yet it is thrust upon you?  This is my dilemma.  For the most part I hold my own, for the most part I love her company, for the most part I can tell her most things with the complete confidence it goes no further.

But!

I also don’t want to be reminded of those times when life wasn’t good.

Imagine a champion jockey constantly being reminded of the races he lost, or a fighter being reminded of the times he was knocked out, irrespective of the times they have won –or their present circumstances?  No man is an island!  Where would we be without friends?  But sometimes, I want to be on an island, or at least have my present cheerfulness celebrated as much as my past miseries.